Linux ws developed on cheap hardware that is STILL subsidized by software profits and those profits are made possible by a pervasive, if boring and insecure, “standard” operating system. No one is making you use windows – I’ve done without it for years now. But every time I go to order a new $100 hard drive that’s twice or three times the size of the last $100 hard drive I bought and every time I upgrade to a new $100 motherboard and cpu bundle that’s like five times faster than the last one I bought, I’m damn glad to be part of a culture that was, in large part, made possible by the technology bundled and marketed by MS.

It’s like dumpster diving: if the corproations don’t sell people houses ten times the size they need then no one tears down their old houses. And if no one tears down their old houses there’s no old fixtures, windows, doors and timbers for the recyclers to use. You can’t build a $1000 house out of empty tin cans and concrete if there’s no old tin cans and you can’t run your biodiesel benz on “free” french fry oil if there’s no corporate fast food joints to generate all that “waste” veggie oil.

Microsoft is a necessary part of our ecology, and you sell it short every time you play into that simple minded “us vs them” dogma.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s what Microsoft did here.

The Rockefeller Foundation still does good works. But that doesn’t make its founder any less of an oil baron.

Go ahead and cash that check, though. You’ve earned it and then some.

You’ve made the big time. Redmond is trying to gain influence with you – in doing so they acknowledge your influence with others.

Take the money, but stay true to your roots; M$ is still the enemy.